


Brothers Torn Apart

by besok



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Cursed!Sam, Depressing, Ghost!Dean - Freeform, Tiny!Sam, bacontest2020, kinda wordy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-19
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:14:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 11,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22794574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besok/pseuds/besok
Summary: Entry for Brothers Apart contest 2020.Dean dies when Celeste attacks...Ya, it's probably gonna be a bummer.
Comments: 13
Kudos: 32





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nightmares06](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightmares06/gifts), [PL1](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PL1/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Brothers Apart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2507237) by [nightmares06](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightmares06/pseuds/nightmares06). 



> So a few disclaimers:
> 
> -I don't own anything. Literally anything. Send help.
> 
> -This is my first creative work, so be warned.
> 
> -Being my first creative work, I had no beta so please be gentle.
> 
> -Also I was pretty high when I wrote this, so there's that.
> 
> -It's also by nature very depressing. Sorry for the feels.

Sam shivered, wrapping his jacket around himself more snugly against the sudden chill, his breath visibly condensing as it left his mouth. He wasn’t deterred however: pressing forward with a dreadful sort of excitement, he reached the huge slits in the vent before him.

Here Sam halted, the caution that Walt had drilled into him making him pause in his mad and reckless dash to take a moment to assess the safety of the room. There were too many dangers in this world for a boy, small enough to ride a hummingbird, to be careless. He listened for the cacophonous clamor of giants over the sounds of his own strained breaths, and peered out at the colossal room from his low vantage point in the vent. He was taking a risk coming during the day, he knew, but it was disorienting enough being so small in a room seemingly made for giants. Although his night-vision had improved considerably since coming to live in the walls, seeing the room built for humans at night turned it into an even more confusing and alien landscape. At least in the light of day he could try wrap his brain around what his eyes were seeing, try and see it as if he was human again too.

The room was furnished with plain and tacky furniture – the owners of the Trails West Motel clearly not concerned with providing more than the absolute bare necessities, but giving some thought and effort towards a cohesive cowboy theme. After raking his eyes across the room, and listening for the telltale earthquakes that signaled a human in motion, Sam deemed the room to be clear, and dropped down from the vent to the carpeted floor beneath.

Sam shivered again as he stood on the thick carpet fibers. He had come prepared for the frigid temperature, ensconced in many layers of hand-woven fabric that had been made for him by Mallory. She knew, before Sam had even woke up to this nightmarish turn his life had taken, that he would need far more than the thin human clothes he had on his back to get him through the winter.

That had been months ago, however. Now the room was lit by the warm summer sun, still hanging high in the sky. Yet despite this, his breath puffed out before him in visible vapor clouds. It was cold. Supernaturally so.

He made a nervous sound – feeling caught between horror and hope. Walt and Mallory had said that this room had never felt unusually cold, before. That the remote had never used to clatter to the floor of its own volition. That there had never been a disembodied voice, whispering along the walls, before Sam had come. That it had been a normal room, before.

Despite now being less than three inches tall, Sam was still a hunter. Dean had taught him how to defend himself against the supernatural creatures that their father had made it his life’s mission to eradicate. His brother had taught him the truth of the world, about what was hidden in the darkness. And so Sam had known, with a terrible certainty, what it meant when Walt had described the odd occurrences that had been escalating in recent months. Odd occurrences that had had happened _here_ , in _this room._

He was pretty sure he knew _what_ was causing the cold spots and kinetic activity. But he was here, risking himself in broad daylight, because he had to know _who_ it was. Whose restless spirit was haunting room 42?

Shivering again, he touched one hand to the salt packet that he had placed in the fine leather satchel Walt had made for him (a tool he was quickly coming to see as indispensable to his survival), and the other grasped around the hilt of the silver knife that Dean had made for him. With no small amount of trepidation Sam started to jog along the wall, pace slowed by his feet being constantly ensnared by carpet fibers as thick as tree roots.

After jogging for some time, Sam started to notice a thick brown material that coated the base of the rug fibers. Like someone had attempted to clean the mess, but felt satisfied enough to leave it after scrubbing at the surface damage. Kneeling down, he pressed his fingers to the tackiness of the tar-like substance, and felt a shiver creep up his spine.

It looked, and even still faintly smelled, like dried blood. 

As he rose to a stand, he let his gaze graze the forest of fibers around his feet, and saw, with an increasing anxiety boiling in his stomach acid, that the blood had pooled in an area so large he couldn’t see its end on the horizon.

Taking in oxygen in short, sporadic bursts, he tried to translate the bloodstain to a human scale in his mind. What did blood pooling up to the size of a lake mean? Could a human lose this amount of blood and survive? He couldn’t fathom it, imagining entire oceans could be pumping in circulatory systems larger than most city aquifers. He was just too small to conceptualize just how many liters of blood loss he was looking at.

With a sort of clinical detachment, Sam recalled reading in his father’s journal that the most effective method for dealing with a haunting was to salt and burn the body of the unfortunate ghost. Cleanse the earth of their mortal coil and the spirit would follow. But not every spirit was attached to their body – sometimes the tether was an object, a place.

Even if an object or place anchored a soul, his father had noted that the anchor must hold some trace of their DNA. DNA like the hemoglobin soaked carpet fibers he was standing on.

A veritable sea of blood.

Gritting his teeth with a grim determination, he pressed forward, his heart pumping furiously in his chest as he runs. He feels the cold surrounding him, pressing in, and he can’t decide if he’s running to something, or running away. There is such a whirlwind of emotions tearing through his body that he can scarcely find himself in it.

Overhead, the light from the dilapidated bedside lamp flickers. Sporadically spitting out light like a seizure. Sam’s breath catches and he comes to a stumbling halt, staring up with wide eyes – his heart pounding as chills of excitement wrack his tiny frame.

Just there, in the flickering light, he’s pretty sure he sees flashes of Dean. Of the light falling on the planes of his face, fracturing in the strands of his hair, his eyelashes. He comes into existence with the light, and when it’s gone so is he.

Sam’s sobbing cry of “Dean!” is too quiet, too far away for the spirit to hear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So ya, I did a fanfiction of a fanfiction. I love the BA series so much (https://archiveofourown.org/series/167201), and the whole multiverse just feels so alive. 
> 
> The contest this is for finishes in March, so hopefully I get everything up by then. I'm not really sure where this is going... I mean where can it go, really? But I have like 5 chapters on my computer and still a creative tickle so I'll see where it goes.
> 
> Also sorry it's so depressing, I've been struggling with illness and I wanted something that hurt as much as my body, idk.


	2. Chapter 2

He was cold. Cold and alone.

Dean gazed listlessly at the dimly lit motel room, every now and then passing his hand though a cheap and dented lamp, the flickering light of the bulb is a brightness so intense it washes out the dingy and depressing world he has found himself trapped in.

He’s not sure where he is, exactly, or how he came to be here. He’s not even sure how long he’s been stuck – time seems to be more like a memory than a reality. It looks like a cheap motel room, one of hundreds he might have stayed in with Sam and Dad. But something about it is just wrong… it seems more like the idea of a room than an actual one. The lighting is always low, like the crepuscular light of twilight, and the room itself is decorated with frustratingly intangible furniture.

He has tried to leave the space, which has become damn near claustrophobic, a few times, but he never seems to get far before he finds himself back in the room, staring at the unseemly rust colored stain in the carpet.

“Jeez, don’t they have maids in this place?” he would grouse, toeing at the dark stain.

It made Dean profoundly uncomfortable, that patch of darkened ground. When he looked at it, he felt like something in him was crawling up and constricting his chest – an anaconda of fear and knowing coiled tightly around him.

So he has gotten good at it now, at averting his gaze from the darkness spilled across the floor. At letting it slide around the edges of his peripheries like a dark and twisting creature: A wendigo waiting to devour him...

Swallowing back the ever-present fear and loneliness, Dean swiped his hand through the lamp again. He watches the light flare, brilliant and bright, before fading out of existence, its shadow pulsing against his retinas.

The rhythmic repetition brought him comfort. Like the behaviors of caged animals that Sam had explained to him in one of his bouts of rampant nerdiness. Stereotypies, he thinks it was called.

Son of a bitch, did he miss Sammy, his Dad.

He couldn’t remember how they got separated. Where did they go? He vaguely remembers the case his dad had been working on – missing children in another small town on the plains. But he had gone off, like he always did, and he had told Dean “Take good care of your brother while I’m gone now, y’hear?” And Dean had replied “Yes, sir”, like he always did, and kept quiet when his dad handed him a handful of cash that wouldn’t last the week. Hopefully he would be back before the money was gone, this time.

He remembered hanging out with Sam, just lounging on the lumpy mattresses like they had hundreds of times before, watching cartoons while Sam insisted on doing homework for a school whose grade report he would never receive. He could never understand Sammy’s fascination with school, but he knew his brother was always the sharpest student in his class – even having received his education in sporadic bursts didn’t slow him down. He was so proud of him…

He can almost hear his voice, calling his name – it sounds so small and distant, like a far off memory.

“Dean!”

Dean sighed, he could almost convince himself that he had heard Sammy, that it wasn’t just auditory hallucinations echoing around the forlorn corners of his consciousness.

He swiped his hand through the lamp again and tried not to focus on the encroaching despair.

He was alone.

So alone.

“Sammy” he croaked, like a small prayer in the crushing silence.


	3. Chapter 3

Dean looks just like he did that day that Sam’s world changed forever. He was even wearing the same pair of faded denims, and a well-loved Led Zeppelin graphic tee.

For the first few moments, Sam doesn’t even really register the translucence of his brother’s body, or the way his hand passes effortlessly through the lamp. He doesn’t even process the truly gargantuan scale that his brother must be to stretch so high above him. All he sees is _Dean_ , his big brother, here at last to help him escape this terrifying nightmare his life has become. Like he always has been there for him; protecting him from monsters, and bullies, and even Dad when the job had carved him into mean and hard edges.

For one moment, one heartbeat, one caught breath, he thinks: _it’s gonna be okay._

And then, like a glass pane shattering, Dean’s form flickers in and out of existence with the light, and the moment splinters into a million fractured pieces – razor sharp shards embedded in Sam’s heart.

His sobbing cry for his brother is instinctive, so basic to his nature the signal must come from his hippocampus, anatomy and the amygdala be damned.

Dean’s only reaction to Sam’s cry is a great, gusting sigh, which is accompanied by an abrupt temperature drop. His grief seems to be magnified with the size of his stricken features – emotions are painted on a face as high and colossal as the Statue of Liberty. It’s a face of such raw despair that Sam has only ever seen it once before, when their father hadn’t yet returned during a hunt which they later learned had gone south. Dean had tucked Sam into bed and reassured him with a smile and his big brother swagger that “everything is gonna be just fine Sammy. Don’t you worry, I’m gonna take care of you, no matter what.” But after Dean turned off the lamp and went to bed himself, Sam could see his face illuminated by the soft light pollution leaking in through the window. In a private moment, he had surrendered himself to emotions that were too big and adult for Sam to truly understand. But he saw the fear twisting his brow, the worry pressing along his lips, and the desperation glinting in his wet eyes…

Sam lets the sight of his brother now, struggling and alone, shore up the strength he needs to continue. His brother had always been there for him. Always. He could be here for Dean now.

Maybe he doesn’t have to lose his family after all.

Taking a deep breath, he continues to press on.

Above him Dean swipes his hand dismally through the lamp again and again (for one wild moment Sam thinks of the stereotypies exhibited by captive animals), illuminating his translucent form for a moment before sputtering out and leaving a dark room and empty space where he had been perched on the bed.

Dean’s forlorn cry of “Sammy” floats on the empty air, a soft sound of despair that makes Sam’s legs pump harder, sweat pooling on the skin of his neck and chest and chilling in the cold air.

His breath is coming in burning gasps now, muscles on fire with the heat of his determination. He’s almost to the nightstand where Dean had been passing his hands through the lamp. He’s almost there.

“Dean!” he cries. “Dean! I’m here! I’m _right down here!”_

The light sputters again and he sees Dean’s head whip around, green eyes flashing as he searches for him – and for one tremulous moment he is teetering on the brink of one reality and another, poised on the edge of the world and the beyond.

And then reality shifts, and Sam is running towards an empty bed, and a dark nightstand, and the feeling of otherworldliness that had been saturating the mundane landscape of the motel room was gone. _Gone_.

And Sam was alone with only the ghosts of his past left to haunt him.


	4. Chapter 4

Dean is starting to think that this motel room is haunted.

At first, he didn’t notice anything or anyone else with him. The room was clearly supernatural, as it wouldn’t let him leave; and though it was furnished in the tacky trappings of Anywhere, America, said furnishing generally remained stubbornly incorporeal.

But recently, Dean has been feeling like he is Not Alone.

It’s an ineffable sense, an awareness creeping along his spine and raising the hair on the back of his neck in a way that feels achingly familiar – not unlike the adrenaline rush of a hunt. He tries not to think too hard about how his heart remains quiet in his chest though, when it would normally be beating a frantic rhythm of fear. He figures it must be part of whatever spell is trapping him in this tremendously boring place.

But the solitude he had known in this room has been slowly eroding; with increasing frequency there have been… _incidents._ Mysterious occurrences. Supernatural activity.

Furniture being rearranged by itself… Hot spots appearing and seeming to move about the room... Objects ostensibly appearing out of nowhere, popping into existence when he’s not looking, and disappearing in the same abrupt way… Voices, echoing and strange like they’re travelling some great distance to reach his ears…

He’s been keeping a mental list – compartmentalizing it in his mind, like it’s just another case, helps him keep his shit together. And Dean desperately wants to keep his shit together. Dad had always taught him that fear sharpens the senses; all smart hunters knew fear. But panic was a cloud that distorted perception; panic led to fumbling, stupid mistakes, and death.

Dean couldn’t die here. Who would take care of Sammy? He loved his dad, but John just didn’t understand Sam like Dean did. Loosing Mary seemed to have carved all the softness out of John, and in its wake left cold hard edges that could cut apart any monster foolish enough to come too close. Sometimes Dean worried that his father’s quest for revenge would drive a wedge through their fragile family, that it would destroy the tentative peace he and Sam had found in the backseat of the Impala. The only home that Sam had ever known.

So Dean ruthlessly crushed his desire to panic into a small pocket in the back of his mind, and tried to approach his hopeless situation like his father had taught him.

He figured the biggest clue was in the voices. Most of the time the words were too garbled and distorted to understand, but every now and then he was able to parse out actual words and phrases. Usually it seemed like strangers, talking about the tedium of their lives – the minutia of civilian life that seemed as fantastic to him as the Tooth Fairy, or Bigfoot. But sometimes, he thought he could hear Sam’s voice, tiny and distant, calling out his name.

“Dean!”

Christ, he hoped Sammy was ok. Not trapped in whatever fresh hell Dean had found himself in.

“Dean!”

He couldn’t remember how he had gotten here, and that worried him, because he was pretty sure that before this nightmare began he had been with Sam. Was Sam looking for him too? Trapped, in another bizarre motel room like this one?

“Hey jerk! Down here!”

Dean frowned, then tensed with a predatory stillness as he listened. He could have sworn he heard... 

_“Dean!”_

_“Sammy?!”_ Dean leapt up, limbs trembling with a frenetic energy, his head whipping around so fast it seemed like it should be disconnected from his body.

“Sam? Where are you, man?” He hoped that if Sam _was_ there he wouldn’t be able to hear the desperation in his voice.

“Dean! Can you… me? … here! I’m … down here, by the …”

Dean’s eyes moved methodically around the room, searching with increasing confusion and desperation for some sign of Sam.

He was alone.

“Sammy?”

As the silence stretched on he felt like the weight of his disappointment would crush him into dust, but it was only heavy enough to bring him to his knees, fingers digging deep into the soft carpet fibers like they too were searching for his lost brother.

And then he heard it, as soft as a sigh. So quiet he might have missed it had he been standing up. “I’m sorry Dee…”

Dean looked to the floor where he thought he had heard Sam’s voice. At first, he didn’t see anything other than the carpet which looked like it hadn’t seen a vacuum in the better part of a decade, and the odd stains and dust-bunnies that littered its surface. But then, he noticed a small shape, bright and distinct against the dull carpet fibers, tucked just under the edge of the nightstand.

Frowning, he moved closer, holding out a tentative hand to reach for the _whatever_ on the floor – it was calling to him like a homing beacon, that little smudge of _something_.

His fingers closed delicately around it, and he lifted it up closer to his eyes so he could inspect it clearly. Just the fact that it seemed agreeably tangible marked it as odd, the fact that it gave him such a strong feeling and came from the last place he had heard his brother’s voice made it his most important clue.

Said clue appeared to be a wisp of fabric, tiny and pale, with some color pattern in miniscule detail. Spreading it out across his palm showed it to be a tiny shirt, polly pocket size. Squinting, he brought it even closer to his eyes as he strained to make out the design on the front.

It looked like one of Sam’s shirts. A thrift store find he remembered from a Goodwill in Milwaukee, with an orange sun and funky seventies font, proclaiming: _Fun! in the Sun Summer Camp, 1982._ The shirt was much too small to read now, but the colors and design that he could make out were all the same.

He carefully closed his hand around the tiny shirt, not wanting to lose it to the crazy physics of the room. He held it close to his chest, and sat by the nightstand for a long time. Waiting.

He didn’t notice that his legs never went numb.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So you might have noticed I've taken some artistic liberties with the notion of ghosts. I decided to go more Others than Supernatural; if someone wants to take the idea and run with a more cannon version, like what would have happened if Dean was more self-aware of his situation, go for it! My creative tickle just took me in this direction.
> 
> Hope ya'll are enjoying :)


	5. Chapter 5

Sam was panting slightly by the time he reached the vent into room 42. He had always been pretty fit, before, but the kind of desperate living that his small size necessitated had ensured that he was both skinner and more hardy than ever.

It had been almost a year since Sam had woken up to a world radically changed from everything he had known; 6 months since Sam had first seen Dean, flickering in the spluttering light of the motel room where everything had gone so wrong; 2 weeks since Sam had carefully placed his shirt under the nightstand and watched it disappear into thin air, leaving only a deathly chill and a feeling of _Dean_ that he couldn’t explain.

As he peered out of the slats, keeping all of his senses attuned to the movement of giants, he gripped his bag with renewed determination.

Dean had always taken care of Sam. Dean had comforted him when nightmares wrenched him from sleep; gave him the last peanut butter and jelly when the money their dad left them ran out; and protected him from bullies at school. He had always been there to save his little brother.

So now Sam was going to save Dean.

It was a Sisyphean task that Sam had thrown himself into with a frantic desperation that he knew made Walt and Mallory nervous. They didn’t want him going into any rooms by himself yet, though Walt had started to teach him the skills that were invaluable at his new size to prepare him for living on his own. Walt and Mallory knew how tenuous their existence was.

But they couldn’t forget what had happened to their daughter.

So Sam was forced to sneak behind their back to visit room #42. He was determined to help his brother, whose ginormous face had been a study in suffering the last time he had seen it.

When Sam was sure that the room was empty, he jumped down with a practiced ease onto the plush carpet fibers. He came more frequently than he would like to admit to this room, always hoping to find Dean but often sitting alone, hidden in a corner pocket of the room, waiting for a brother who never appeared. And even when he did appear, melancholy and morose, he seemed oblivious to Sam’s efforts to reach out. His voice was simply too small to carry across the veil, he supposed, his body too small to be seen. He knew that ghosts were often oblivious to their surroundings, trapped in a facsimile of their life, or in their moment of death. But they _could_ be reached, and Sam had doggedly dedicated himself to this end.

As he approached the bottom of the nightstand, he looked up at the impossibly high distance with no small amount of trepidation. He had just started to climb on his own, and though he had never been acrophobic before he thought that the only rational response to such a bone-crushing and dizzying height was fear.

But he knew that staying on the ground was hindering his chances of attracting Dean’s attention. Even in death, Dean was still human sized, and he interacted with the space in the way that a human would. And humans seldom looked to the ground; the imperfections that now tripped Sam up had felt smooth and flat when he was big. Now it was a struggle to traverse the room without stumbling on carpet fibers.

So with a final, fortifying breath, Sam made his way around the back of the nightstand, where he knew the cord to the alarm clock would provide a built-in climbing rope to reach the top. He only had two hours until the maid was scheduled to clean the room, and he wanted to utilize all the time that he could.

As he made his way up the cord, the scratches in the plastic coating plenty big enough to form stable hand and footholds, he felt the temperature start to plummet. His heart pounding in anticipation, he pushed his malnourished muscles to their limit as he made his ascent.

Sam struggled slightly to cross over the lip of the nightstand, but finally found himself, panting and sore and trembling with excitement, on the top. From his new, higher vantage point, he could see Dean pacing the room, his back rigid and straight like it became when he was upset and struggling to keep his cool. He looked normal, if a little transparent, and Sam was again glad that Dean’s spirit didn’t appear as he had when he died. His short hair was still spiked up just so, and his face was crumpled into a thoughtful frown, his green eyes intense as they flitted about the room.

The sight brought an ache to Sam’s chest, and he stood for a moment, just watching the brother he was afraid he would never see again, and tried to pretend that the last year had never happened. Eventually, the sound of a car engine turning over in the parking lot snapped him out of his trance, and he stepped forward, hands clenching the strap of his bag in a white-knuckled grip.

When he reached the edge of the nightstand, he took a deep breath, leaned forward, cupped his hands around his mouth, and put all of the power his tiny lungs could generate into his cry. “Dean!”

Dean’s pacing stopped as he twisted around with a bemused look on his face. It was the closest Dean had come to acknowledging Sam since he had died. Seizing the opportunity, Sam inhaled deeply, and then yelled so loud his larynx protested “Dean! I’m here! I’m _right here!”_

Dean’s green eyes flashed as they scanned the room, and Sam waved his arms desperately, jumping up and down as he tried to make himself more noticeable. But no matter how desperately he flailed, Dean’s eyes never found his, instead continuing to flit from surface to surface as he turned in place.

“Dean!” Sam cried again, voice raw and strained. “Dean!”  
  


Dean turned around, brow furrowed with confusion, but his eyes shining with hope.

“Sammy?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't get your hopes up, I'm gonna drag this out a bit more. Think of it more as a clue for Dean and less of a cliffhanger.
> 
> I only vaguely have an idea of where this is going so if ya'll have any bright ideas, hit me up in the comments. My life is like a rudderless ship, soooooo... ya.
> 
> working on more chapters still tho! I'm trying, ok?


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in updating folks! I got put on a new medication which has been helping a lot with my symptoms but just makes me super tired. I think my body is adjusting tho. Woo! Unfortunately now doctors appointments have been canceled so I'm just kinda crossing my fingers with these meds for the foreseeable future.  
> Hope ya'll are staying safe on lockdown ;)
> 
> I'm still really trying to get these all up before the deadline passes. I'm trying dudes and dudettes and dudexs!

Dean stared at the collection of tiny objects dotting his palm. A bright orange shirt; two miniscule sneakers, a slip of paper with writing too small to be legible, and a paperclip, bent into the crude shape of an S.

He had been finding the tiny clues throughout the room, always accompanied by the ethereal voice of his brother, so soft he would miss it if he breathed too loudly. He was sure that the shirt and sneakers belonged to Sam, but he couldn’t understand their unfathomably small size.

Dean didn’t know whether to be comforted or devastated by the evidence that seemed to indicate Sam was trapped in this bizarre nightmare with him. It definitely made him more determined than ever to find a way out, and so he had been investigating any otherworldly occurrences with renewed vigor. However not all clues seemed to revolve around his brother.

For a while (time seemed inconsequential to him now, wherever he was clearly didn’t experience days or nights) he had been hearing children’s voices, accompanied by what he was coming to consider “furniture disturbance”, such as moving chairs or curtains. The beds would be made, sheets crisp and clean, but when he turned back around they would be in disarray, as if freshly slept in.

“But Linnnnkkkk, I’m boredddd…” a disembodied voice whined from an area to his right. “When… keep going? I want to… Disneyland!”

Dean closed his hand gently around his small collection and stood up, turning towards the sound of the unfamiliar voice. It was slightly colored by a speech impediment – he thought the speaker was probably around five or six years old.

He saw the curtain flutter as if pushed aside by invisible hands as another voice, this one sounding slightly older but still having the lilting ring of childhood about it, replied: “Dude, chill… We’ve just gotta wait… Mom and Dad get the car fixed.”

Dean stepped forward excitedly. The voices were much clearer than those he normally heard; except for Sam whose voice had become increasingly clear but remained so quiet, if relatively close sounding.

“Hello?” Dean couldn’t keep the hopeful tone out of his own voice. “Can you hear me? Is anyone there?”

For a moment he was met with silence, and the soft susurrus as the curtain fell back into place. But then…

“Hello?” It sounded like the older kid, a boy probably only a little older than Sam. “… someone there?”

“Yes! _Yes_! I’m here!” This was going better than most of his attempts at communication. “Are you stuck here too?”

There was another pause, and the younger voice filtered in again “Link? … nobody there… I’m scared.”

Damn it, the last thing Dean needed was some traumatized civies, and just kids at that. He needed project an air of calm and control, like his father had taught him to do when interacting with frightened potential victims, oblivious to the dangers the supernatural presented.

“It’s ok,” he soothed. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m just… confused. Where are you, exactly?”

“… We’re right here…” this was the younger boy again. “Where are you?”

Dean looked around, trying to pinpoint where the voice was coming from. He heard a slight shuffle, and then saw the bed skirt lift, as if invisible hands had grasped the edge and lifted it up. As he squinted in concentration, he tried to unfocus his eyes and relax his ciliary muscles like he would when he was trying to see the hidden image in those stupid Magic Eye™ posters that everyone seemed so enamored with. Gradually, the translucent image of a young boy, kneeling on the floor and peering underneath the nearest bed, became visible.

Dean gasped in excitement, and took an involuntary step forward. “I’m right here too! Can you see me?” He waved his hands in the universally understood gesture for ‘look here’.

The little boy looked up with wide, unbelieving eyes. His jaw did not follow the upward motion the rest of his head took.

“Ya,” he breathed. “I can see you.”

Dean heard the muted thud of light footsteps and heard the older boy speak again. “Wade? What can you see?” Try though he might, he could only see a faint shadow in the vague shape of a person; ‘Link’ he guessed.

“There’s a boy…” Wade lifted a finger to point at Dean while maintaining unblinking eye contact. He had the intensity of a child confronted with something utterly unbelievable. Dean could relate to that, he still remembered his brutal awakening to the supernatural world. It haunted him in sleep and waking hours.

He kneeled down slowly, to put himself on the kid’s level. “Hey,” he said gently. “I’m Dean.”

Wade’s small brow crumpled in concentration as he took in Dean’s smooth movements. He brought his lower jaw up to chew his lip in thought for a moment before he gave a tentative smile. “I’m Wade.” He jerked his head to the side without breaking eye contact, “That’s my big brother, Lincoln.”

Dean smiled and tried to reign in his excitement. _He could see him!_ They were _communicating!_ It was the first time he had seen or talked to another person in… too long.

He hurriedly transferred the small objects clenched in his fist to his pocket. He wanted to have both hands free for this. He’d found _people_ (at least he hoped they were people. They seemed normal enough in their brotherly bickering, a familiar rhythm that made his chest ache with longing).

Dean rested both hands on his knees and took a deep breath; he was determined to be the hunter his father had taught him to be, and that meant reigning in his heightened emotions.

“Where are you right now, Wade? Can you remember?”

Wade furrowed his brow in confusion, and looked up to the shadow beside him.

“… What? Who are you talking to?” Lincoln’s voice filtered through stronger and clearer than before.

“I’m talking to Dean. He’s right here, can’t you see him?”

“… Ummm, I dunno. I think I see… something. Like a shadow, maybe?” The shape that Dean assumed was Lincoln seemed to get closer; Dean could almost make out a pair of eyes squinting down at him. “I can kinda hear a voice though, sometimes. He sounds so far away…”

“Yeah well, you ain’t too visible yourself there buddy,” Dean shot back. He couldn’t stop the wide grin from splitting his face.

Both boys laughed at that, the sound loosened a tightness Dean didn’t realize had been building in his chest during his prolonged period of isolation.

“Maybe you have to sit down?” Wade suggested, with childlike logic and innocence.

“… Okay…”

Dean saw the dim shape that was becoming increasingly detailed bend down, legs folded in front and hands settled in their lap. Wade took the opportunity to rearrange himself too, dropping the bed skirt and folding his legs like a pretzel, his hands twitching like he was trying to resist the urge to reach out and touch Dean.

“So… do you remember where you are? Or how you got here?” Dean tried again.

“We’re on our way to Disneyland!” Wade bounced in excitement.

Dean smiled at his enthusiasm and gently tried to redirect, “But do you know where you are now?”

Wade looked bemusedly towards his older brother, “Link? Do you know?”

The silhouette seemed to shrug “… Trails West, I think this hotel was called. I’m pretty sure we’re in, like, Kansas or somethin’. Our car broke down on the road and we had to stay here while we wait for it to get fixed.”

“Trails West…” Dean brought a hand up to rub at his chin in thought. He remembered the name, but it was strange and hazy. Like the faded fragments of a dream, clinging to conscious thought with wispy fingers.

“Ya, we’re in room 24!” Wade seemed anxious to contribute to the conversation again.

Link’s hand raised up, Dean could see him more clearly now, to ruffle through his brother’s dark and wild hair. “Room 42,” he corrected. Dean could hear the smile in his voice, and faintly see it on his dark face.

“Oh” Wade frowned in consternation and turned to Dean again. “I get my numbers and letters weird sometimes. The doctor said its because of dys… dys… dystopia.”

Link’s shoulders shook as he laughed, and Dean could definitely see the glint of his teeth now when he smiled. “Dyslexia, little dude.”

Wade nodded and looked seriously at Dean. “Dyslexia.”

Dean smiled vaguely, but was entangled in a web of thoughts. These kids didn’t seem to share his confusion about how they had arrived here. They even seemed to know, in that disinterested way that kids sometimes processed what they perceived as ‘unimportant’ information, where they were. Obviously their current location wasn’t as important as their destination, but they both remembered the circumstances of their arrival, which was far more than Dean did.

“So… where are your parents now? They’re not here, are they?” Dean looked around reflexively as he spoke. He hadn’t noticed or heard anyone else, but then this was the first time he had even seen anybody since he found himself trapped in this tragically dull twilight zone episode.

Link shook his head, his hair was not as long as Wade’s, but the kinky curls still trembled with the motion. “No, they’re at the mechanic’s. They left…” he glanced back at the alarm clock on the nightstand. “… a few hours ago now. They should be back soon.”

Dean felt a chill go down his spine, and dread coil in his stomach. He could see the alarm clock, but he had never been able to make out the numbers. It was part of what made him feel so untethered in time. And it was yet another difference between him and the boys he was talking to.

Wade bounced up and down in joy “You can say hi, Dean! I ain’t never had a see-through friend before!”

Wade laughed brightly while Link chuckled and tilted his head to the side, considering. Link seemed to become a little more aware of the strangeness of the situation, and asked “I can kinda see you now, but why were you invisible?” He seemed to think for a moment, and then leaned forward in excitement. “Are you a ghost?”

That drew a genuine laugh out of Dean. “No way! Ghosts are bad business. They make the temperature drop and furniture fly across the room.” He grew more sober as he said “You need to run the other way if you ever see one, ok? And hit ‘em with iron and salt. The bastards hate that. If you make a ring of salt they can’t enter.”

Wade giggled at his use of ‘bastards’, and Link’s eyes grew wide in his face. “You’ve seen a ghost before?”

Dean smiled and puffed out his chest a bit. He couldn’t help but preen when he read the interest in the taut lines of Link’s body. “Sure, somebody’s got to get rid of them so they can’t hurt anybody.”

“Wooooow,” Link breathed, stretching the syllable out like taffy. “That is _so_ _cool!_ ” he exclaimed. “So you’re like, a ghost hunter?”

Dean smiled proudly, “I guess you could say that.”

“That is _awesome!_ ” Wade agreed, scooting closer, eyes shining with admiration.

Just then, the door shook in its frame as a knuckle firmly rapped against the other side. All three boys jumped and turned towards the door, six eyes wide and two hearts pounding.

“Oh! That must be Mom and Dad,” Link clambered up somewhat stiffly. His legs had gone a bit numb while they had been talking.

“Mom and Dad! You can stay and meet them, right Dean?” Wade asked anxiously, his eyes were so puppy like it was almost a physical blow for Dean. In that moment he wished more than anything that he was looking into a different pair of puppy eyes.

Swallowing his worry for his brother, Dean nodded. “Ya, I um, I’d love to meet ‘em.”

“Good!” If Dean’s eyes showed his sadness, Wade didn’t seem to notice, lost in his own enthusiasm.

Dean and Wade both turned as Link opened the door. Dean had an ominous feeling he couldn’t place, but as a hunter he trusted his instincts. He rose to his feet in one swift motion, and took a step forward and in front of the youngest boy behind him. He could see the vague outline of a person at the door, but it was what was contained within his silhouette that frightened him the most…

A swirling, oily darkness of perverse malintent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I actually googled 'Trails West Hotel' and after some very shallow digging found a couple that actually exist in the US! One was in Kansas, the other in Arizona. Now Arizona would have made more sense for my ocs who are Disneyland bound (I'm from California, sorry I guess I write what I know. The only attraction I know about in the middle of the country now is Joe Exotic's weirdness. Obvs I just watched Tiger King and holy shiz people, quality entertainment right there, but I digress...), but I felt like Kansas was more true to the original story, and to Dean and Sam's characters. Lebanon baby!
> 
> Once again, I write and edit these solo, so sorry if it's weird or nonsensical. If you're a grammar nazi like me feel free to hit me up in the comments to express your frustration with my illiteracy or some constructive criticism, whatever floats your boat. Or if you had any opinions on the meth heads who keep tigers, I'm still processing a lot of feelings from that too, so I totally dig it. ;P


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay folks! I've been dealing with an exhausting insurance situation; a Kafkaesque nightmare I think Escher must have designed, on top of being so sick as to desperately need the insurance coverage. So just a shit sandwich, basically. Also I didn't revise this one as vigorously as I normally try to, so sorry if it's poorly edited. Time permitting I'm gonna try and go back and clean up anything that seems unbearably messy.
> 
> Anyway, I saw the deadline was extended and have been grateful for that extra time. I'm still aiming to have everything up by the new deadline at the end of this month, but if you're following this story be assured that I plan to follow it to the end, even if I don't make the deadline. 
> 
> Wheeeeeelllllll, I hope you're all doing good and staying healthy. Enjoy the new chapter!

Sam watched from the ceiling vent with trepidation and envy as the two kids talked to his brother. Strangers, who had been able to pierce the veil more effectively than he had been able to in over a year of intentional effort. Sam felt a surge of jealousy well up within him, twisting along his intestines and esophagus, settling with a heaviness in his stomach and stabbing its sharp fingers into his heart. He had never felt so small in all his life as he did now.

His hands clenched the rough woven fabric of his pants as he heard the gentle tones of Dean’s voice. Dying hadn’t diminished any of the kindness or care that he had shown Sam in life. The realization warmed his heart while simultaneously burning a hole in his stomach – how long before a ghost became a poltergeist? From what he had read in his father’s journal, it seemed like violent hauntings were the inevitable end for all ghostly encounters. Dean may have been killed, the brutal and bloody end all hunters met, but surely even death couldn’t dim the brightness of his soul? Sam hoped so, fervently, with all of his tiny being.

“… I’m Wade. That’s my big brother, Lincoln.” The soft words drifted in, breaking Sam’s train of thought. He stuffed the envy and resentment, for this boy who still had his big brother but still felt entitled to Sam’s, in the back of his mind. It was neither of these kids’ fault that Dean had died, and it wasn’t their fault they were big enough to get his attention. He had to focus on what he could do right now; which was stay hidden, and eavesdrop.

From the conversation he was listening to with a keen desperation, Sam gathered that Dean wasn’t aware of the horrible events that had ended his life and changed Sam’s forever. When the oldest boy asked Dean if he was a ghost, Sam nearly fell through the wide slats of the vent as he lurched forward, intent on his brother’s response.

“No way! Ghosts are bad business. They make the temperature drop and furniture fly across the room. You need to run the other way if you ever see one, ok? And hit ‘em with iron and salt. The bastards hate that. If you make a ring of salt they can’t enter.”

Sam felt a sob building in his throat, tears burning behind his eyes. Dean didn’t know. He couldn’t feel the room get colder with his presence; he couldn’t remember the witch throwing him across the room and cracking his skull against the nightstand. Here he was, a ghost that his Dad would have hunted, and he was still trying to protect people. The brutality of this world that would take someone so good, and the cruel irony of his brother being twisted into the very thing his father had spent his life hunting, was too much for Sam in that moment. He fell backward, still present enough to realize the danger of falling through the vent, and let his small body be wracked by great heaving sobs.

The murmured words below filtered in through a dim peripheral awareness, as Sam let himself be overcome by grief in a way that hadn’t been safe under the floorboards where Walt and Mallory had made their home. As his sobs quieted he listened with a numbed kind of apathy, emotionally exhausted, to the descriptions of an everyday milieu, which was foreign to his life before, and unfathomable now that the world had become so frighteningly large. These kids who were happily on their way to Disneyland, who giggled with unbridled enjoyment at the notion of ghosts, or ghost hunters: They had the kind of lives that had been stolen from his own family, the kind of lives that his family tried to protect. It left him with a bittersweet feeling of jealousy, that they should have the kind of life he had always wanted; and gratitude that there were those out there living normal lives, unburdened by the shadow of the supernatural.

When Sam heard a knocking at the door, rattling the thin aluminum walls of the air duct, he resolutely wiped the tears from his face and crawled back to the open slats of the vent. Grasping the jagged metal edges of the slats with careful hands, he peered through the opening; using the bony edge of his shoulder to wipe away the residual tears clinging to his lashes as he watched the boys talk to his brother excitedly about their returning parents.

The older kid was just opening the door when Sam saw Dean leap to his feet, taking a protective stance in front of the younger boy. He watched as a man’s hand, gnarled and scarred by a life hard-lived, reach in to grasp Link roughly by the shoulder and shove him back. A large body, clad in a dark hoodie and jeans, stepped in swiftly, reaching down Link’s arm to yank his small wrist in an iron grip, while simultaneously reaching back to firmly close and lock the door. Link cried out as he was jerked around, his neck snapping back with the abrupt motion.

“Link!” the younger brother cried, reaching forward instinctively. Dean tensed, and Sam’s breath condensed into fine misty vapor clouds as the temperature of the room abruptly plummeted.

“Shut the fuck up kid,” the man, Sam now realized, growled. He lifted a gun from the back of his jeans as he brought the muzzle of the gun up to the older boy’s head, pressing it viciously into his cheek and dimpling the smooth plane of his skin. “Or I’ll shoot. Do you know what happens if I redecorate the room with your brother’s brains?”

Wade whimpered on the floor as the light bulbs suddenly started to splutter, the flickering light burning itself into Sam’s retinas and leaving faded blue ghosts in its absence.

Dean stepped forward, flickering out of existence for a few brief moments before reappearing in front of the man and Link, his face a mask of calm rage and determination that Sam had never seen before.

“What the fuck…”

“Let him go,” Dean interrupted, his voice tinny and cold; it sounded more ethereal than it had moments before when he had been excitedly talking with the two boys.

Sam could see that this monstrous man, the worst kind of human that preyed on children, was sweating profusely, even in the chill of Dean’s ghostly presence. His eyes darted ceaselessly around the room, to the flickering lights, the child on the floor, Dean, the window whose view of the outside was still mostly obstructed by tattered and moth-eaten curtains.

“Listen, punk…” the man sneered, hefting Link’s frozen body and maintaining his shaky grip on the gun as he took another step closer to the beds, where Wade was still trembling on the floor. “If you don’t shut the fuck up, I’m gonna blow this kid’s brains out. Y’understand?”

The furniture in the room began to shake; beds and nightstands and lamps jumping like the frijoles saltarines Sam had gotten in El Paso while their dad hunted a Cihuateteo. Even the vent that Sam was perched upon began to tremble, screws knocking against the shuddering metal frame. Sam tensed, gripping the slat beneath him so tightly the rough edges of the metal scraped against his palms and fingers, piercing through the thin strands of his hand wrappings and digging into the tender flesh below. A year at his new size had worn away the shock at discovering most objects made for human use were far more coarse and jagged for him now than they had been when he stood over four feet tall, but still he gritted his teeth at the sensation.

“Let him go.” Dean repeated, his voice taking on an ominous edge as it echoed around the walls of the room he had died in. Everything was shaking more violently now; to Sam it felt as if the Earth itself was surging with the force of his brother’s anger. He felt helpless and unbelievably small as he could do nothing but watch the scene unfold below him, and struggle not to fall through the vent that was bucking in its frame.

The man relaxed his grip on the boy and let his gun hand point instead towards Dean; his eyes still frantically darting around the increasingly chaotic scene.

“What the fuck?! What’s going o-ahhh!”

As soon as the gun was pointed away from Link’s head, Dean surged forward, blinking out of this plane only to reappear seconds later next to the intruder. In one swift and practiced motion, he grabbed the gun hand and pinched the pressure points in the wrist to force the weapon from his hand, and then used the momentum of his attack to twist the larger man’s arm behind him at an impossible angle. Even over the cacophonous clatter of the kinetic activity, Sam could hear the sickening cracks as the man’s radius and ulna bones snapped under the unrelenting pressure. He gave a deafening scream as he lurched forward, letting go of his would-be victim as his body crumpled to the ground.

Link seemed to wobble where he stood as he watched Dean crouch over the man who had threatened to kill him. He seemed stunned into stillness until Dean looked up at him with a fire in his eyes. They mellowed into a silent appraisal as he looked at Link, limbs now trembling from the onslaught of adrenaline, and back to Wade, who was now shaking violently but had not moved from his spot on the floor.

“Are you all right?” Dean asked gently, the room no longer rattling with his ghostly intensity. The lights still flickered, creating an eerie atmosphere, sporadically illuminating the devastation his anger had caused on the physical objects in the room. The floor was strewn with loose items that had been shaken from their perches, the lamp laid on the floor with its shattered bulb glinting like cut gems where the light refracted on its scattered surfaces.

For a moment there was only the gurgling sound made by the fallen predator, and then Link took a gasping breath, and another, and another.

“Hey,” Dean’s voice was as commanding as it was otherworldly. “Hey, it’s ok. He can’t do anything now; I won’t let him. But I need to know if he hurt you.”

Wade started to cry, great gasping sobs of hysteria. Dean’s gentle insistence, and his brother’s desperate sobs, seemed to break through to the older brother, and he nodded his head frantically, a macabre sort of dance as his knees and arms continued to violently shake.

“Y-ya. I-I… I’m… I th-think I’m o-okay.” He stuttered, taking a few cautious steps toward his brother before collapsing next to him, and pulling his quivering body into his arms.

“It’s ok. I’m ok. It’s ok now,” he assured Wade again and again with his breathy mantra; Link’s voice slowly gaining strength as he found relief in his brother’s presence.

Dean smiled gently as he nodded, watching the two with a sort of desolation in his green eyes that Sam couldn’t bear. He was haunted by the loss of his brother; just as Sam was haunted by Dean. It was so terribly cruel, that they were separated not only by size but also by death. Sam almost threw himself through the slat he clung to so that his brother wouldn’t have to be so crushingly alone.

Just as he worked up the nerve to call out, there was a frenzied knocking that rattled the door in its jam. Sam cringed back, the thought of another giant human entering the room making his throat thick with fear.

“Hello?” A voice called, muffled slightly by the thin wood. “Is everyone alright? We heard a scream, and… stuff being knocked around.”

“It’s probably some goddamn sex freaks in there, doing their kinky shit. Just leave ‘em alone man…” another man groused.

“No, there were kids checked into this room. The parents asked me to keep an eye on the door when they left.” The door handle twisted as it was frantically turned from the other side. “Shit, I think I have the master key at the front desk...”

Dean looked up to the door, and suddenly it sprang open, revealing a harried person in a clerk uniform and a disgruntled man wearing only pants. Their eyes bounced around the room; landing on the two boys, huddled against each other; the objects broken and scattered around the floor; the man with his arm at a sickening angle, Sam wondered what they saw, if they saw anything, of Dean; and finally going to the shiny chrome glint of the gun on the floor, sparking in the afternoon sun that filtered in from the door.

“What in the shit…” the older man, presumably staying in a neighboring room, breathed as he took in the devastation.

The clerk seemed to be more cognizant, or at least less obviously inebriated, and quickly took control of the situation. “Call 911!” he threw back to the man behind him as he leaped forward and grabbed the gun from the floor. He fumbled it slightly, obviously unused to the weight; his hands made clumsy from fear and unfamiliarity.

“… I ain’t got a phone…” the disheveled man bemoaned, looking blearily around him as if one might magically appear in the parking lot.

The clerk finally got a solid grip on the gun and turned quickly, pointing it with shaking hands and, if Sam was honest, shit-poor aim at the intruder still lying broken on the ground where Dean had dropped him. Dean himself had vanished, the lights in the room finally dimming until the only illumination streamed in through the curtained windows and opened door.

“There should be a phone on the nightstand!” The clerk barked, stress turning his voice sharp. He looked young, not yet a man, and he trembled with the tension that permeated the room.

The bedraggled homesteader shuffled in, keeping a wide berth around the fallen perpetrator and the shaken kid holding the gun, walking with his back to the wall until he was at the nightstand. The phone set had fallen to the ground when the nightstand had tipped over, and he bent with the care of one whose body had grown creaky and painful with age; the paunch of his belly spilling over his jeans while he leaned over to grasp the handset with shaking hands.

Sam crawled away from the vent, going backward blindly until he ran into the wall of the air duct. He leaned against it and tried to slow his breathing as the frantic pounding of his heart drowned out all other noise. Unconsciously, he reached down and grasped the hilt of his knife, fingers tightening until the knuckles turned bone-white.

He didn’t move until his heart finally slowed enough to hear the sounds of more humans filtering through the opening in the ceiling. As the obstreperous voices and clamoring of many people in a small space penetrated the mental fog his consciousness had hidden itself in, he slowly began to make his way back to the home he had found with Walt and Mallory. He tried and failed to subdue the timorous tremors of his limbs, and prayed that in the confusion and chaos of the almost-assault, no one would hear his retreat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As Dean would say, "Freakin' humans, man!" We can be monsters too! I kinda wanted to juxtapose the idea of a human monster with the supernatural kind that Dean has become. Also, I have a crippling addiction to true crime; this was probably the mutant baby of my love of Supernatural meeting my love of Forensic Files. Sorry, I'm not a great-Escapist :P I hope you liked it anyway
> 
> (Also, because I'm a very literal human being, plagued by the need for specifics, I just wanted to clarify that while I love a good crime doc, I also have a healthy skepticism of the pseudo-science that too often makes its way into our courtrooms under the largely unregulated umbrella of Forensic "Science". Bite marks? BITE ME!  
> Anywho, now that I've said my piece, I can post this in good conscience. Byeeee!)


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay folks! Had a rough couple of weeks there but nightmares06 graciously extended the deadline for me. Hooray! Anyway last chapters will be up today. Enjoy!

Time moves like a slow and steady stream, eroding the sharp edges of Dean until he is as smooth and glossy as a river stone. Sometimes he feels like more of a reflection of Dean than an actual person; just a shadow of himself impressed upon the four walls that entrapped him.

He was currently engaged in one of his favorite mindless activities, a ritual behavior that had quickly become his preferred method of relaxation in this imposed solitude, broken occasionally by ghostly visitations and what he would classify as hauntings.

But Dean was beginning to have the sickening feeling that he wasn’t being haunted, that this wasn’t a curse.

He shoved the thought down as he mindlessly swiped his hand through the lamp on the nightstand again; watching as the bulb flared to life as his hand connected and dimmed to darkness again when he had passed.

He wasn’t sure how long it had been since he had met the two boys, Lincoln and Wade. After he had broken the arm of the sicko who had leveled a gun at a young boy’s head, everyone had vanished, and he was left alone in the room once again.

Alone, in a room he couldn’t escape.

As his frustration boiled over, his hand made a tangible connection with the lamp, sending it crashing to the ground. He stared down at it, the shards of glass from the broken bulb winking up at him, and then turned his gaze to his hand, flexing and relaxing the muscles rhythmically as he thought.

The furnishings of the room were no longer as resolutely incorporeal as they had been when he first woke up here, in this never-ending nightmare. It seemed that more and more often, he was able to tangibly interact with the world around him. He didn’t know what to make of it, other than the idea that was beginning to build itself with an upsetting clarity; nestled in that back corner of his mind he wouldn’t let it escape from, next to his unconscious thoughts.

He shoved that thought away, banishing it from the more active regions of his brain, as he had been doing with an alarming regularity. Letting out a gusty sigh, Dean looked around for something to distract himself with.

Unfortunately nothing as wonderfully distracting as Link and Wade had come-a-knockin’ at his door again. He idly wondered if it was wrong to wish that some other normies might get enmeshed in this supernatural shit-show his life had become, just to provide him some entertainment. Probably, but he was finding less and less energy to care.

The mundane nature of the attacker had been off-putting for Dean. At first he thought they must have been a demon, the way the darkness swirled inside them and the perverse aura they exuded, yet as the man stepped into the room he had become more clear to Dean. His grimy sweater; the sheen of sweat beading his forehead and upper lip; the metallic glint of chrome in the barrel of his gun; all had resolved into a clearer focus as he stepped within the four walls of Dean’s prison.

When the man had grabbed Link, his large and weathered hands seeming disproportionately large as he clasped the child’s tiny frame in an iron grip, Dean saw red. He had never been so powerfully overwhelmed by anger in his life, and even now he shrunk away from the memory of it: terrified of and yet strangely enraptured by the intensity of the emotion.

When he heard Wade’s quiet sobs behind him, he had been utterly consumed by the thought of his own brother, young and vulnerable and _alone_ somewhere. For a crazy moment, he had thought it was Sam scared and trembling behind him: for a wild second he saw a tall, well dressed woman with billowing pale blonde hair and death in her eyes walking through that door…

And then the chrome barrel winked in the sunlight streaming in, and Dean had snapped back into reality. And the fear had morphed into righteous anger, so hot and raw it felt like it was burning Dean’s very soul. His perception had tunneled until there was only the enemy before him, and he did what his father had trained him to do: he hunted.

The man had gone down easily; Dean thought he might have actually inadvertently broken some of his bones when he had taken him down. In the end, he had been a monster: and Dean knew how to hunt monsters.

“… _Dean_ …”

Dean was pulled from his reflective musings when he heard his name called out; soft as a breeze, fragile as a freshly bloomed flower. His head whipped around, eyes skimming over every visible surface; neck tilting as he tried to angle his ears toward the noise.

It had sounded like Sammy’s voice, yet somehow different. The high pitch of childhood seemed mellowed out, yet scratchy: the unpredictable register of early puberty.

“Sam?” he called out, not even trying anymore to curb the desperation in his voice. Frowning as his head slowly rotated like an unmoored boat, he looked around the room and found it depressingly unchanged and uninhabited.

The first few times that Dean had heard Sam call to him, he had frantically searched every inch of his prison to find him: however the frenzied searches had never yielded his baby brother, and so he had adopted a more methodical approach to his examination of the room, hoping to sus out the source of Sam’s soft voice. It seemed like a more effective strategy, as it had yielded him precious clues which thankfully had not disappeared from the pocket he stored them in.

“… _Dean! … I’m here! … bed!”_

Dean cast his gaze to the left, squinting at the bed sheets that had probably started out life as a bright cerulean, but which had now faded to a depressingly dingy shade of blue-grey. There was nothing that he noticed immediately, but as he continued to stare with a predatory intensity, his eyes caught the shifting movements of something tiny on the bed.

Dean leaned forward with a laser focus, neck adjusting to the movement of his torso so that his head stayed steady and straight, maintaining it’s angle in relation to the… _distortion_ on the sheets. He leaned as close as he could without his eyes crossing at the proximity, willing the small shape to resolve itself into something his brain could understand.

“Sam?” Dean asked, hoping to echolocate. “Where are you?”

For a long moment, there was only silence. Even the movement on the bed had stopped, just a translucent, infinitesimal, shape; a small conglomeration of slightly different shades of color resting atop the sheets like a transparency. It was in the shape of a small person, tinier than a finger.

Just as Dean was deciding that the only sense he hadn’t tried yet was touch, he heard his brother’s voice call out to him. “Dean? Can you see me?” He was no bat, but it sounded like it came from the tiny shape beneath him.

Afraid to even breathe, Dean brought his hand forward slowly, trembling with a desperate excitement, reaching out to tentatively touch the tiny person on the bed.

He gasped with surprise when he fingers actually made contact with a small body. The tiny limbs were so warm against his skin; he realized that he had forgotten what warmth even felt like.

The figure swam into clearer focus; still transparent but with clearly defined edges. He could make out a small face framed by shaggy hair that was a familiar shade of brown. They wore simple yet effective clothes in dark shades; he had a stray thought that they would be effective camouflage in the dark nooks and crannies of the room, which he had become all too familiar with in his numerous escape attempts.

The features were too small and transparent for him to ascertain the identity with any reasonable degree of accuracy, but he had this ineffable sense he knew the tiny person before him.

“Sammy?” Dean breathed, confusion and terror and elation all swirling around his head until he was dizzy with the emotional overload.


	9. Chapter 9

Sam stood at the base of one of the giant bedframes, looking around cautiously and listening intently for any signs of human activity. He knew he was playing a dangerous game; risking being seen and even captured by the giant, clomping humans who entered rooms with wanton abandon and stepped with unintentional yet deadly force. But these were risks Sam felt he had to take; he would do anything to help his brother. Dean had died trying to save him, after all.

Sam swallowed the guilt that was threatening to bring up his meager breakfast, and looked up to the flickering light again. He could see the transparent lines of Dean’s hand as it passed through the lamp; the planes of his face, made strange by size and distance; and the rough cotton weave of his pants that reached down close to where Sam himself stood, like two giant pillars of opaque denim.

He was going to make Dean see him today, no matter the cost. It was a promise he had been making to his brother for quite some time now; a mantra that he repeated to himself every time he stepped outside the protected confines of the walls.

Steeling himself against the ever-present fear he had known since finding himself under 3 inches tall, Sam grasped the dusty fabric of the bed skirt and began to climb. It was a daunting task, to reach the top of the bed, but he had become an excellent climber under Walt’s careful and patient tutelage. He’d had a few years now to hone the skill.

The light continued to flicker as Sam leaned out to grasp the edge of the bedcover; when suddenly there was a loud crashing sound behind him. Sam whipped his head around, glancing up to see the forlorn expression of confusion on his brother’s face, and a sea of shimmering broken glass on the floor below, where it clustered around the fallen lamp frame. Sam felt a surge of restless energy rise within him at the sight and propel him the last exhausting stretch of the climb. His arms were burning by the time he finally dragged himself onto the flat expanse of the bed. _The bed where Dean was sitting._ He was _so close_.

Sam took a deep breath, his tiny frame seeming to swell with his expanding lungs, and yelled with all the strength he had. “Dean!”

Dean rarely responded when he called his name. Sometimes he would look around, interested, as if he had heard Sam’s desperate cries. Sometimes he would call Sam’s name too, his voice keening and on the edge of despair. Sometimes he would disappear, and objects would fly around the room with a frightening speed. Those wild responses would always scare Sam, since objects that could easily crush his tiny body would start to move on their own, often with increasing violence. But he knew it was Dean causing it, and the thought that it might be him looking for Sam always made Sam stay when he knew, intellectually, that he should leave. Most of the time the room just seemed empty, if cold, with no sign of his big brother at all.

So he was somewhat surprised when Dean immediately reacted to his voice, head turning with alacrity as his green eyes flashed.

“Sam?”

Sam’s breath caught on a sob. He missed his brother so much; it had become a powerful thirst. A need rather than desire, as necessary to his continued existence as food or water. And he could hear in his brother’s voice that Dean needed him too, probably even more than Sam did. At least Sam had Walt and Mallory, Dean was all alone…

Sam had to make Dean see him. He _had_ to. “Dean! Dean! I’m here! Down here on the bed!”

Sam waved his arms around him like one of those wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube men he had often seen undulating in front of car dealerships as their small, broken family passed through the dilapidated towns of Anywhere, America.

Dean actually turned towards him, and Sam felt hope grow and fill the cracked corners of his heart as giant green eyes seemed to lock on to him. There was a slight wrinkle on Dean’s forehead, his face carved into familiar patterns of intense focus, and he began to lean forward slowly, eyes never wavering from Sam’s small frame.

“Sam?” Dean’s breath was freezing as it drifted across Sam’s skin; he let out an involuntary shiver at the deep chill. “Where are you?”

Sam couldn’t even get enough air to respond. His heart was clattering in his chest like a runaway horse, his head pounding with the pulsing flow of blood. He had never been so close to a human before; and even if Dean was, strictly speaking, a ghost, he was just as overwhelmingly large as a human was, and it was hard for Sam to fight against the instinctive fear response. He was just so _small_ … for a moment all he could do was struggle to remember how to breathe.

Dean’s eyes were still intensely fixed on the space where Sam was standing, but not quite focused on him, so Sam didn’t notice at first when his brother started to reach forward. He was too fixated with staring up into his brother’s eyes that were larger than his head, and grappling with the intense adrenal response to being caught in Dean’s predatory gaze. But he couldn’t miss the giant appendage as it slowly entered into his peripheral view; he sent it an alarmed glance and stumbled slightly as he tried to take a step back. Sam still was trembling from the cold and the adrenaline, and his brain felt like it was sluggish and broken, fixating on all the wrong things: like how the semi-transparent amulet dangling in front of him was bigger than his torso. But when he looked up at his brother, into those overly large eyes that seemed to hold a spark of hope, he knew that he couldn’t give in to the fear and run away. He had to be here for Dean, whatever that meant.

So he braced himself, trusting his brother not to hurt him, and felt Dean’s icy fingers brush lightly against his arm and leg. Dean’s eyes seemed to focus on Sam; the pupils contracting even a small amount became wildly obvious to someone Sam’s size. Dean gasped, and Sam tried to reassure him with his own eyes that Sam was _there._

“Sammy?”

Sam started nodding frantically, his head moving as if it was disjointed from the rest of his body. He didn’t even notice the tears tracing his cheeks with wet reflective stripes; he only noticed how difficult it was becoming to see. His head was starting to throb from his brain continuously rattling around inside it when, finally, he found his voice.

“Ya, Dean,” he choked out. “It’s me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sudah selesai! We've come to the end friends; I hope you enjoyed the journey! I enjoyed writing it, and even have some one-shots outlined in this universe too, so I'll be back to play. 
> 
> I just wanted to end with my thanks to nightmares06 for hosting the contest and for writing such amazing stories! Truly delightful, you should all go check them out if you haven't already (if you haven't I imagine you're thinking something like wtf have i just read? lol)!
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/series/167201
> 
> Stay healthy, hale and hearty ya'll!


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